Competitive eating vies with family expectations in a funny, heartfelt
novel for middle-grade readers by National Book Award winner Pete
Hautman.
David can eat an entire sixteen-inch pepperoni pizza in four minutes and
thirty-six seconds. Not bad. But he knows he can do better. In fact,
he'll have to do better: he's going to compete in the Super Pigorino
Bowl, the world's greatest pizza-eating contest, and he has to win it,
because he borrowed his mom's credit card and accidentally put $2,000 on
it. So he really needs that prize money. Like, yesterday. As if
training to be a competitive eater weren't enough, he's also got to keep
an eye on his little brother, Mal (who, if the family believed in
labels, would be labeled autistic, but they don't, so they just label
him Mal). And don't even get started on the new weirdness going on
between his two best friends, Cyn and HeyMan. Master talent Pete Hautman
has whipped up a rich narrative shot through with equal parts humor and
tenderness, and the result is a middle-grade novel too delicious to put
down.